Friday, October 17, 2003
A Cubs Fantasy
This essay was originally broadcast on WVPE on October 16, 2003.
by Joe Chaney
My friend Jonathan and I spent some time during the baseball playoffs idly spinning out the fantasy of a Cubs-Redsox World Series. In our fantasy, the series builds dramatically toward a seventh and decisive game, so that at last one of the perennially ill-fated teams is destined to claim the elusive title. One curse, at least, will be lifted.
So here’s a play-by-play of the scene at Fenway: Boston is batting in the bottom of the ninth, with the Cubs leading one-zip. Cubs’ ace pitcher Mark Prior is hurling a two-hitter. It’s been cold and is getting colder. Speedster Johnny Damon is standing at first when Todd Walker whiffs. It’s Prior’s fourteenth strikeout. Nomar Garciaparra is up next, and, soon fooled by a low slider, he grounds out to the right side. Damon advances to second. Now there are two outs and Boston slugger Manny Ramirez steps to the plate. Dusty gives the sign to walk Ramirez, setting up possible force plays at three bases. It’s a gamble, because Ramirez now represents the potential winning run. But Manny has been hitting the ball hard all night, and besides, he’s a weak base-runner.
It’s all up to David Ortiz, a clutch hitter for Boston throughout the post-season. The runners take their leads. A hit, in all likelihood, ties the game. But Prior is going like a train. He quickly blows two pitches by Ortiz, high heat. One more strike and it’s over. The ground crew back at Wrigley are unfurling the 2003 World Series banner, preparing to raise it into the windy sky above the “friendly confines.” It would be the first such banner for the Cubs in 95 years. Not a Cub fan alive can remember Orval Overall’s win over Ty Cobb and the Detroit Tigers in game five of the ’08 series. That must have felt wonderful; but no one remembers. What matters now is Mark Prior’s right arm and Damion Miller’s mitt and the trajectory of a baseball from pitcher’s mound to home plate on a chilly night in Boston.
Cubs fans smell the victory. But then something terrible happens. Ortiz hits a weak grounder to second, and the ball just seems to skitter under Grudzielanek’s glove, and it keeps rolling and dies out in shallow right field. Johnny Damon scores easily, tying the game.
Ramirez decides to go for third. Sammy Sosa fires a rocket. Ramirez slides. The ball, almost perfectly thrown, glances off Manny’s shoulder and bounds off the low barrier and back out onto the left field turf. Ramirez leaps to his feet and starts for home. The Redsox fans are going wild. But wait; something is wrong. Manny is hobbling–clenching his left leg. He tumbles to the grass. He’s pulled a hamstring. Meanwhile, Cubs left fielder Moises Alou and shortstop Alex Gonzalez race for the ball, unaware that Ramirez has collapsed midway between third and home. The two fielders lunge for the ball and collide. They actually knock heads, and both are hurt, both are down. Manny Ramirez turns onto his belly and begins to drag his lower body toward the plate. Grudzielanek is already in left field, but he can’t find the ball. It must be under one of the injured players. But how can he roll his teammate over and free the ball when there’s a question of a neck injury? Along the third base line, Ramirez is making almost no progress. He’s almost fainting. And now snow begins to fall. In just minutes it progresses to blizzard conditions. Somewhere in the whiteout perhaps Ramirez is still clawing his way toward home plate; maybe Alou is stirring, roused from his daze by the dull pain of a hardball against his ribs.
But no need for Jonathan and me (and the rest of you Cubs fans) to go on torturing ourselves. The Cubs lost Wednesday night to the annoying, baby-faced Florida Marlins, a team that plays as though the world were an innocent place devoid of sinister curses, original sins, lake effect snow. If only, on that fateful day back in 1945, they had let that humble tavern keeper enjoy his bleacher seats at Wrigley Field with his goat!